Commonwealth v. Everson
| Decision Date | 02 November 1885 |
| Citation | 140 Mass. 292,2 N.E. 839 |
| Parties | Commonwealth v. Elizabeth Everson |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
Complaint in two counts, for keeping and maintaining a common nuisance to wit, a certain tenement in Buckland, used for the illegal sale and illegal keeping of intoxicating liquors, on May 1, 1883, and on divers other days and times between that day and May 31, 1884. Trial in the Superior Court, before Staples, J., who allowed a bill of exceptions, in substance as follows:
It appeared that a license of the first and fourth classes to sell intoxicating liquors was issued to the defendant by the selectmen of the town of Buckland, on May 1, 1883, to continue in force one year; and that, on May 5, 1883, she received from said selectmen a license as an innholder, and carried on her employment as such in said tenement.
To show that the sales of intoxicating liquors, shown by the evidence offered by the government, were illegal, and not justified by the license, the government offered evidence tending to prove that the defendant kept a public bar. It appeared that there was a counter or bar in the licensed room of the defendant's inn, and a number of tables; that various sales of ale and lager beer were made there; that such sales were sometimes made over said counter and sometimes not; that there was lunch on the counter at the time of such sales; and that sales of intoxicating liquors were made over the bar to persons who did not eat any lunch.
The defendant contended that her acts in keeping lunch upon her counter for her patrons were not done as a pretence to evade the condition of her license relative to a public bar; that she was ignorant of the law relating to a public bar, and ignorant that the sales or furnishing of lunch from said counter, or sales of liquor without lunch therefrom, had any relation to the question whether it was a public bar; that she habitually, during the time alleged in the complaint kept lunch thereon, as above described, before any decisions of any court defining a public bar had been made or published, and that, at the time charged in the first count, it was not generally known to the public or to the legal profession that a bar used for the sale of liquors alone without lunches was a public bar, their attention not having been called to the question, and she contended that her ignorance of what the law was relative to a public bar tended to show that her said acts in the use of said counter for lunch were really done to keep the counter as a lunch counter, and not with the purpose to evade the law relative to a public bar by fraud, and that it was so kept as a lunch counter; that there was an absence of public information and of information among the legal profession on this subject at the time of her alleged offence; and that this tended to prove her ignorance of the law at that time; and she called as a witness an attorney shown to be duly qualified in the law and to be an expert in criminal practice, and asked him this question: ...
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